BRINGING INDUSTRIAL INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS TO ICT HIGHER UNIVERSITY EDUCATION George Sharkov 1 , Maya Stoeva 2 1 Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Plovdiv "Paisii Hilendarski" / European Software Institute – Center Eastern Europe, Sofia (BULGARIA) 2 Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Plovdiv "Paisii Hilendarski" (BULGARIA) Abstract The ongoing global digitalization and virtualization impose various new challenges to learning, planning, working, and living. The cultivation of flexibility and adaptability became crucial for modern education, especially for the pioneers of digital transformation – students in software engineering, computer science, informatics, and rapidly growing areas like cybersecurity, AI-related disciplines, and IT management and e-leadership programs. Especially in the software engineering field, the students should develop competencies for the most popular ICT professionals' profiles under the intersection between theory or knowledge area and practice with respective skills. Higher education programs should be continuously updated to balance theory related to the industry's current and future demands and the best practices to develop the relevant skills, knowledge, and competencies. Process-oriented models have been widely used to achieve software and IT services industry maturity for many years. Our approach is based on gradually introducing some of the most popular models and industrial standards in higher education and practicing them in real projects and teamwork delivered for technical disciplines. We present and describe in detail our methodology, practical experience, and positive results of implementing industry standards and software quality maturity models like CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification), TMMI (Test Maturity Model integration), combined with Agile/Scrum and DevOps, as well as CERT-RMM (CERT Resilience Management Model), ISO 25065:2019, ISO 25000, and others. The purpose is not to formally study the standards in detail but to understand the generic processes and roles in the software development lifecycle, the relevant stakeholders and responsibilities, and practical aspects of teamwork. In addition, we outline the advantages and implementation issues of different organizational models. Practicing them by wearing different "hats" relevant to various roles in the project teams under tight deadlines cultivates the culture and competencies needed for a software engineer. To validate the competencies covered by the courses in a particular program, we have used an experimental mapping method to the European e- competence framework e-CF (EN 16234-1:2019) combined with the competence-based model of the most popular ICT jobs profiles. Thus, we have assessed students' preparedness for their expected roles and jobs and have identified additional subjects and content to integrate. Keywords: software quality maturity models, CMMI, CMMC, TMMI, Scrum, CERT-RMM, software engineer competencies, software quality, industrial standards, ISO 25065:2019, ISO 25000, process improvements, software requirements, project management, e-CF EN 16234. 1 INTRODUCTION Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide students and teachers powerful options for augmenting the educational and training activities through distance learning tools and resources. They have been boosted and proven very helpful during the covid-19 pandemic last years and still continue to be widely exploited under the geopolitical threats and disruptions, such as the war in Ukraine. The popular previously but not so efficient for the education technologies such as television, videos, DVD, telephone, satellite systems, computers, networks hardware and software have evolved into specialized equipment and services, such as videoconferencing, teleworking, and even telepresence [1]. ICT fosters university students to take responsibility for their knowledge through research, organizing, evaluating the information, and discussing via various advanced technological platforms [2]. The critical aspects of learning, teaching, and working in the ICT higher education area are related to the processes of access, management, planning, efficiency, and quality [3] of: • Student-centered learning: all software engineering students use computers/software as primary data and information sources; Proceedings of EDULEARN22 Conference 4th-6th July 2022, Palma, Mallorca, Spain ISBN: 978-84-09-42484-9 6131